DANA POINT – The city’s gates and posted hours at Strand Vista Park will stay.

Saying there were alternate paths to the beach and worrying that taxpayers here would end up paying more to police the area if unfettered access from the park through a multimillion dollar headlands development was granted, the City Council approved an urgency ordinance Monday allowing the city to control access to the beach.

“This is the appropriate thing to do,” Mayor Steven Weinberg said, “And I think we have to take control of our own city and government and run it the best way we can and safest way we can.”

Following a city staff and police services presentation that showed the highest number of police service calls in the area of newly-opened bluff-top Strand Vista Park than any of the other city parks, the council voted 4-0 to enact the ordinance, which went into effect immediately.

Councilman Joel Bishop recused himself because he lives within 500 feet of the area in question.

Faced with an April 2 California Coastal Commission deadline to remove gates and replace signs that have restricted hours of access on several paths leading to Strand Beach, the council declared that a public nuisance exists in the area making the action necessary for public safety.

With police officials warning that unfettered access would turn the development into an “amusement park” with a real potential for crimes like vandalism, burglaries and “sex parties,” and some of the undeveloped lots potentially into encampments for the homeless, council members were not taking any chances.

Critics and groups that oppose the city restrictions say that the urgency ordinance is an attempt by Dana Point to circumvent the commission deadline. They also question the log of criminal incidents included in the city staff report, saying most of the alleged violations occur outside the development and away from the paths in question.

“I heard criticism of the police data,” Councilwoman Lara Anderson said. “I frankly am not ready to take a chance … Can’t afford it right now.”

Policing the area would become expensive and unfair for Dana Point residents to have to subsidize, she said.

Late on Monday but before the council meeting, the commission staff in a last-minute letter to urge the panel not to adopt the ordinance, said that while it offered to work with the city to process the required permits for the gates and hours to comply with the Coastal Act, the city staff was recommending that the council use its nuisance abatement powers “to circumvent those requirements based on inconclusive evidence that a public nuisance exists.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” said City Attorney Patrick Muñoz.

In the end, the council action trumps the Coastal Commission deadline, leaving it moot, the city said.

“What it means is that their deadline is irrelevant,” Muñoz said before the night meeting. “We think that the deadline is ridiculous to begin with.”

And, the urgency ordinance was needed to avoid unnecessary litigation with the commission which, he said, was threatening to sue the city.

Commission staff, which in its letter also had offered to set a new deadline for the city to address the issues, could not be reached for comment.

A couple of people spoke against the ordinance at the meeting and described the outcome as fait accompli, saying that the city had used all of its staff and police services firepower to drive home points to the council that one called a smokescreen and another a ruse.

“Their sense of urgency is contrived,” said Denise Erkeneff, a Dana Point resident and a volunteer for the Surfrider Foundation, that has previously called the posted hours “most offensive to beachgoers.”

She, too, would not want taxpayers to pay for increased policing costs, assuming the scenario painted by police officials were to come true, she said.

“That’s what they’re alleging that all hell’s going to break loose in sleepy little Dana Point,” she said.

Reached before the council meeting, Jeri Silva, who lives at Niguel Beach Terrace across the street from the new park, said she doesn’t believe a “public nuisance” exists.

“Compared to Newport, Balboa and Huntington Beach rowdiness, we hardly have any,” said the retired respiratory therapist, who’s lived at the condominium complex for 13 years. “I think it’s pretty mellow here.”

Silva says she would like to see unfettered access to the beach via the South Strand Switchback Trail, but understands the gates on the paths through the custom home development.

“They have a right to privacy,” she said. “If I spend that much money on a home, I wouldn’t want someone coming through the property.”

Vonne Barnes of San Clemente, who co-owns a rental property at Niguel Beach Terrace with her husband, spoke in opposition of the ordinance at the council meeting.

“This claim of a ‘nuisance condition’ is nothing but a ruse to get around Coastal Commission enforcement to protect public beach access,” she said in an earlier e-mail.

A city staff report said “There is no need to engage in a debate or controversy over these issues” and that nothing in the Coastal Act “is a limitation on the power of any city to declare, prohibit, and abate nuisances.”

Councilman Scott Schoeffel said that where the gates bar access, signs are clearly posted telling people how to get to other access points leading to Strand Beach.

Public access from Strand Vista Park to the beach through the Headlands development, where 118 custom-built homes are planned for 121 acres, had become an issue between the city and commission staff in recent months.

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